IT 5130: Two People Active with Web 2.0

I keep running across these names and want to make sure that I do not lose their names:

• Carl Fisch is known for his “Did you know?” video.
• Professor Wesch from Kansas State University is doing some cool things.

IT5130: Using Job Aids

On page 25 of “Writing Online Training Tutorials,” Martin Tessmer tells us that “Any critical or lengthy body of information – a table of terms, a matrix of factors to consider when solving a problem, a five-step procedure, — should be styled as a printable document that can be saved for just-in-time reference by the trainee.” This struck me because I’ve been wondering how a job aid (printed instructional message) would “fit” into a course.
 
Specifically, for our final culminating project, one of the requirements is to include a printed instructional piece. I’ve struggled with the best way to integrate such a document. According to Tessmer, it’s a good idea to create the job aid first and then capture the gist for the course topic/lesson (p.24). I plan to try this method for my final culminating project. I’ll try to put myself in the learner’s shoes and think about what information they will need to support them after they complete the course. I also plan to have students use the job aid by asking them some practice questions that require that they use the job aid. I’m thinking, too, that in addition to including job aids as part of a course it would be helpful to post them in another location. This would allow learners who’ve taken the course easy access to the document as well as people who had not taken the course.

IT 5130: Levels of Knowledge

After reading the “Individual Differences Principle” chapter from Mayer’s book, I realize that the learner’s level of knowledge about a particular topic impacts how well they retain and are able to apply what they learn. Even more than I realized, it’s important to understand your audience! This sounds obvious but we often create courses and expect them to help multiple levels of learners. For example, I know that I have created a course to teach learners how to operate a product. The intended audience for the course was end-user customers andddd service personnel. Based on what Mayer says, if I used multimedia learning events that were based on the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, the course will most likely benefit learners with low-level knowldege the most. In this case, that would mainly be the end-user customers.

I need to re-think how I plan these “Operations” courses.

I wonder what I can do to help the learners with a higher level of knowledge?

IT 5130: Mayer Chap 9-10

I just finished reading chapter 9 and 10 from Mayer’s Multi-media Learning book, and several questions come to mind. Last week, I had a idea to include a few “expert interviews” in an online course that I’m developing to help learners understand a few complex processes. I wondered how much pre-scripting I need to do? Should I just let the “expert” how the questions that I would like him to answer as part of the interview? Or should I plan it out in more detail?

Based on the readings where Mayer tells us that narration and animation is better than narration alone, I suspect that I should plan out the script so that I can work with the multimedia designer on the visuals needed to accompany the narration.

I need to think more about this… Thoughts anyone?

IT 5130: The Michael Welsh Presentation

I watched Michael Welsh’s presentation last night and was amazed at his ideas. He talked about ways to make learning more meaningful for students. He started with these assumptions/preconceptions that students have:

• To learn is to acquire information
• Information is scarce and hard to find
• Trust authority for good information
• Authorized information is beyond discussion
• Obey the authority
• Follow along

Throughout the presenation, he showed how incorrect these assumptions really are. He said that we need to “create platforms for participation” that allow students to learn. He quoted someone by reminding us that “nobody is as smart as everybody.”He said that students shouldn’t trust the authority for good information because there are so many resources for information, and the information can be validated. We need to help students learn how to use the tools to enhance their learning. He believes we need to help students become more knowledge “able” as opposed to the typical knowledeable.

He showed us an example portal that he uses in his classroom. It was creative and he backed it with reasons why it works. The portal is a place for collaborative learning. It included the use of free tools such as Diigo and Twitter. I was inspired by his ideas and forward thinking. I would like to be able to implement some of the ideas he shared in my workplace but am reluctant because I have to make sure that any of the discussions we have in the courses I work with are not able to be viewed by anyone outside our firewall.

I plan to spend the next few days and weeks thinking about how I could implement some of these ideas.

IT 5130: Trying Animoto

After looking at the tool Animoto, I was intrigued by what it could do, so I saved several of my PowerPoint slides as gif files and uploaded them to Animoto. While I think this tool could work well with photos, I don’t think it worked well for my content. Check out my video if you like.

IT 5130: Duarte’s Slide:ology

Duarte reminds us that it’s good to generate a bunch of ideas because good ideas don’t come along without time and effort. Early on in the project, we need to generate as many ideas as we can. We also need to sketch out our ideas so that we can start putting them into an visual format. After all, when we we’re creating instructional messages, we want learners to remember them. Soooo, we need to make them memorable!

She makes a good point when she reminds us to not get caught up assuming that people possess a level of knowledge that they do not.

In addition: we need to keep these things in mind:

• Simiplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotions
• Stories

I’ve noticed that stories in particular keep coming up our the readings (recently in Gary Reynolds articles), and I can see the benefit as they can make the content relevant and memorable. Again, our learners want meaning from what they are told.

IT 5130: The Use of Words and Pictures According to Mayer

More on Mayer’s Multimedia Learning book…

• Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other. (p. 81) This is because according to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, meaningful learning depends on building connections between mental representations of corresponding words and pictures.
• Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively. (p.96) We are sense makers who engage in active cognitive processes such as selecting the relevant words and pictures, organizing the selected material into verbal and visual mental models, and integrating the verbal and visual models. (p.100)
• Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included. (p.112)Extraneous material is anytning that isn’t relevant to the learning at hand material that isn’t relevant to the topics being taught. We want learners to be able to focus on the topic.

IT 5130: Students Don’t Learn by Hands-on Approaches “in the Physical Sense”

I remember reading a sentence in Mayer’s book Multimedia Learning that said something along these lines: Students don’t learn by hands-on approaches in a physical sense. (p.18) They learn by engaging in cognitive activity. This summary stuck with me. Even now, weeks later, I remember what he said. I want to elaborate on this summary in case I forget and need a reminder, so here it goes.

It’s not a mater of what’s going on with the learner’s physical behavior. Rather, it’s a matter of what’s going on in the learner’s mind. Meaningful learning depends on the learner’s cognitive activity during learning. Behavioral activity doesn’t guarantee cognitively active learning. We need to promote cognitive active learning. (p.17-19)

I know I’ve been guilty of creating learning acitivies that require “hands-on” activity from learners but that doesn’t require learners to “think” per se. From this point on, “hands-on” activity will have a different meaning!

IT 5130: Evaluating an Instructional Message

After reading Medina’s rules, Tufte’s Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design, and the early chapters in Mayer’s Multimedia Learning, I created a summary of what I learned about creating effective instructional messages.  The attached MS Word file contains the summary.

Based on feedback from my peers in class and the class discussions I’ve read and been a part of, I marked up a copy of a job aid that is currently being used at my company. The attached PDF shows a marked up copy of the changes I suggest for the Cabling Job Aid.

Because I found this excercise so helpful and eye opening, I prepared a “mini lesson” to share with my department. I shared the two attached documents with my department last week. My co-workers told me how helpful it was to see a “before” and “after” version. My boss told me that what I shared was incredibly valuable and that this sort of information will help take our courses and support materials to the next level. Giving the mini lesson also helped me to better understand what I had learned.

As an aside, we plan to implement the suggested changes to the job aid within the next couple of weeks.